Man City set for era of European dominance following Champions League victory

Pep Guardiola's team have set a new benchmark after completing treble in Istanbul

Manchester City players celebrate after winning the Champions League final against Inter Milan in Istanbul. AFP

Sergio Aguero would not have been anywhere else. Manchester City’s all-time record goalscorer, still ebullient in this, the second year since his sudden retirement, wanted to witness, live in Istanbul, his old club’s crowning moment.

It sort of closed a circle. Aguero will always have his statue at the Etihad, always have the memory and the vivid soundtrack of the goal that dramatically sealed the first of City’s Premier League titles.

He will always have the love of the City supporters he was among in the Ataturk Stadium. But the last of his 390 matches in a City jersey had left something unfulfilled.

Aguero’s farewell to City was as a late substitute, bought on for a goal that never came the previous time City played in a Champions League final, when he collected a silver medal as Chelsea players kissed their golds.

Two years on, City have achieved the landmark they have aspired to for so long and have plotted so meticulously.

It is a moment to look back on the milestones that guided them to this summit, remember the likes of Aguero, Vincent Kompany, David Silva, Yaya Toure and Fernandinho. Footballers who elevated a club who at the beginning of this century were yo-yoing between the divisions in English football, occasionally attracting a glamorous manager who would call them a ‘sleeping giant’ and then watch City doze off again.

The transformation over the last 15 years, through the clarity applied through most of the Abu Dhabi United Group’s period of ownership, now has its ultimate dividend, the one conspicuous gap on the honours board now filled.

The best team in Europe, by a distance, has lifted the most competitive tournament in club football, a turn of events not as common as logic says it should be.

Liverpool’s victory in the previous Istanbul final in 2005 was famously improbable. Chelsea were outsiders when they took on, and beat, on penalties, Bayern Munich in Bavaria in 2012. Real Madrid, last year’s winners, were very good at seizing moments in a series of knockout ties where they had mostly been inferior to the opposition, including City in the semi-final.

Chelsea were second-favourites to City at kick-off in Porto in 2021. By the end of it, Aguero, Gabriel Jesus and Raheem Sterling had all drawn blanks for a City who scored in all but five of their previous 60 matches that season.

That trio of gifted forwards would move on, part of the careful recycling process at an institution forever seeking incremental improvement. The version of City that now holds a treble has looked, for most of the run-in to the glittering climax to this season, an upgrade on even the finest, earlier sides of manager Pep Guardiola’s time in charge.

A new name is engraved on the big old trophy, in this, its 68th year. City’s is the first fresh entry on the European Cup’s roll of honour in 11 years, and only the second since Borussia Dortmund, in 1997, shocked Juventus in the final.

For all that outside investment has altered the landscape of European club football in the last 20 years, the trophy has proved again and again to be resistant to new winners, to be protective of its cartel of traditional superclubs.

Breaking into that closed circle needs financial muscle. But it needs to be used shrewdly too. The contrast between City and Paris Saint-Germain, hugely monied thanks to their backing from Qatar since 2011, is never more striking than now, as Guardiola reflects on his seven-year journey with City.

PSG, still seeking a first European Cup, are meanwhile embarking on the process of appointing a sixth different manager across the same period.

The latest to be pointed to the door in Paris, Christophe Galtier, is on his way having overseen the club’s second successive Champions League exit at the last-16 stage while the squad he was in charge of were receiving the highest combined salaries of any club in Europe. The greatest player to ever wear a PSG jersey, Lionel Messi, was booed by some home fans when he played his last match for them eight days ago.

Hard to imagine Aguero, Messi’s friend and compatriot, ever hearing that from City loyalists, among whom he was celebrating in Istanbul, with every reason to believe that, the drought broken, the club’s first European Cup will be part of a sequence.

One Premier League title, seized by Aguero’s last-gasp goal in 2012, became seven in the next dozen years. One Champions League title should become at least two or three for City by the end of this decade.